A watch party for the 2024 election’s only vice presidential debate between Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, and J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, got off to a late start on Oct. 1 after a fire alarm evacuated the Joe Crowley Student Union.
One engine from Reno Fire arrived at the scene at 5:39 p.m. and left at 6:05 p.m. after the building was cleared and students were allowed to re-enter.
“There was a fire alarm, we responded and they searched and found smoke in one of the elevator control rooms,” a representative from Reno Fire said.
The watch party began after the building was cleared, partway into the first question of the debate. Its audience was lighter than that of the Sept. 10 presidential debate, where students filled 120 of the student union theater’s 200 seats.
The general mood matched this, and the debate, screened in one of the fourth-floor ballrooms by the Associated Students of the University of Nevada as part of its civic engagement programming, was far less fiery than the previous one.
Alex O., a Harris-aligned voter, found the evening fairly uneventful
“[It] went as I expected, very boring, just kind of generic in a sense,” he said. “I wasn’t really surprised that I’d be a little bored by it, but I was more bored by J.D. Vance.”
Alex O. also added that he saw very little chance of it swaying the election, with other voters in his life firmly entrenched on either side.
Some other voters, however, found the evening refreshing.
Madison Spencer, who will be voting this year for the first time, compared it favorably with past elections.
“It reminds me of times before 2016, or when Obama was running,” Spencer said. “Even though I was very young when that was happening, I remember it being way more civil then, it wasn’t just constantly dissing the other side.”
Voters nationwide polled by CNN came away from the debate with a favorability gain for both candidates. Walz’s post-debate boost was by 13%, and Vance’s was by 11%. A CBS poll had the debate as nearly a tie.
Keaton Ricker, a Trump-aligned voter, said he was shocked at how civil the debate was.
“They didn’t jab at one another for anything stupid, laughable,” Ricker said. “It is an improvement from the actual presidential debate, I would say, because we don’t need all these taking jabs at each other for a whole half an hour of a debate. No need for that.”
Ricker’s only complaint was that he felt Vance had been fact-checked more than Walz, including an incident where Vance had exceeded his time in a question on immigration and moderators both fact-checked him and cut both candidate’s mics.
A responsibility for live fact-checking was given to the candidates as part of the terms of the debate, according to reporting from the New York Times –– making the resulting rapport even more surprising to some viewers at the watch party.
One viewer, Erick Saldate, even felt that the candidates’ civility shielded misinformation from scrutiny.
“I think that J.D. Vance is trying to act like he has more facts, and he kind of hides his misinformation better than Donald Trump does,” Saldate said, referring to the fact checking Trump received from moderators at the Sept. 10 debate. “When J.D. Vance refused to say that Trump lost the 2020 election…I think that is apparent. I think he tried to hide that in a long answer of ‘I think we should respect each other, blah, blah blah.’”
Vance’s discussion of immigration was the only instance in which moderators fact checked claims. Vance repeated false claims that illegal Haitian migrants had settled in the town of Springfield, Ohio –– connected with Trump’s claims from the presidential debate that immigrants were “eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats.”
Margaret Brennan, one of the moderators, clarified to the audience that the migrants in Springfield have legal status. Vance then complained about the fact check.
“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check,” Vance said. “And since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”
Jace Ouchida, who was at the watch party with friends, found that moment particularly memorable.
“There was definitely some laughter in this auditorium,” Ouchida said. “And that surprised me, that that was something a VP candidate would say on live TV.”
Walz had some awkward moments of his own. In one instance, he was discussing gun control.
“I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents,” Walz said. “I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it.”
Those two moments were among the few that got a substantial response from the small audience in a debate that some said couldn’t be further from its presidential counterpart on Sept. 10. It was the last official debate of this presidential election cycle.
Peregrine Hart and Edward Light can be reached via email at peregrineh@unr.edu or on Instagram via @NevadaSagebrush.
